alt Hacker Newshas Uber had a positive ROI on the billions invested in it? I am pretty sure the return on the preferred price from the late rounds 10 years ago is basically zero. Net income has always been negative or close to zero. From a consumer perspective, in late stage cities, uber rides are the same or more expensive than old taxis, and the quality of vehicles is lower. what was it all worth?
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https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uCMu9MoRwCo
This reminds me of this bit on a podcast where a tidbit of learned information so blatantly contradicts basic logic.
There's always an explanation, in this case, the tidbit was that "dull knives are more dangerous", because you apply more force when cutting vegetables and can end up hurting yourself, but it's laughably wrong when applied to weapons.
In the case of the tidbit of "uber actually loses money" that might have been relevant in the first years, there's this phenomenon where companies operate at a loss for some time (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_dumping) in order to accumulate market share (i.e a monopoly) and then they increase prices in order to recoup their investment and make profits.
So you read somewhere that "uber actually loses money" and this was from presumably a trusted source, but you failed to account the date of the knowledge, when Uber was somewhat smaller and their margins were smaller, and you read it assuming it applies to the present, so you somehow thought that one of the biggest tech companies in the world, that charges around 30% per trip, and has almost no marginal costs, would operate at a loss.
So I don't want to be offensive, but it's so wrong that it has a comedic quality.
at $156B market cap someone sure is making money.
I've no say in the manner in which they ran/run their business but judging a mega-corporation on lemonade-stand level accounting is a fool's errand.